The Polar Vortex Threatens
Right now, the weather is decent. Cold, winter, bare ground. By this time next week, we'll be facing an Arctic blast which will test everything with extreme cold. For a solid week...
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Farming News - Cows now are on their last decent pasture for the winter. Snow and ice threatens - but hey, it’s winter.
Writing News - Three paperbacks still pending, while my new project distracts me from finishing them
Fiction News - The Hooman Saga continues. It’s developing into a race to safety.
Expectancy Factor - A nightmare gave me its own solution, one one for all of us to apply toward our success.
Farming News
Cold and getting worse by all the dire predictions we keep reading about.
Cows found a couple holes in the fence to get themselves onto the last pasture I have - and I’m wanting to keep them there until mid-February.
I saw this from the road, And she stood there until I could come over a football-field’s length to take this picture.
Those mounds are going to be used to get a flat place for our new little barn.
(Oh, the heifer in front left got that mud on her face in rubbing some dirt bank to scratch her face.)
With our family visitors gone, our herd is now back to the process of finding enough grass and forage to burn inside that will keep themselves warm during this winter. And water that isn’t frozen.
Right now, it’s comparatively balmy.
Jacket weather, a couple of layers.
Here, they have enough pasture in the rest of the year to hopefully make it until mid February where I put off having to feed bales. Two pastures away are some freeze-proof waterers. One pasture away is the hay bales I’ve set out.
I don’t know that the weather is going to let us. A combination of our droughty fall not growing enough grass, and snow/ice covering the short stuff that’s left. Tall grass they can dig through the snow. Any snow lasting over a day or so will need some supplement. At least my hay guy said he’s got some spare - but I have another 36 bales that I haven’t put out.
They have a little pond both in the pasture they have and the one next door. But they are only a foot deep at best. And will freeze solid enough that even breaking a hole and clearing that ice will just take you down to unfrozen mud, not water.
In another neighboring pasture there is a deep pond. One that will take maybe a week to freeze so hard I’d have to chop a hole they could use. So maybe that’s an option.
What we’re facing is an Arctic blast that’s coming in this week and staying in the single digits at night for about a week — and not getting about freezing during the day. And that’s got alarm bells going for everyone. Sure, it’s not what they face in Iowa or Minnesota, but it’s problematic enough for us.
No blizzards, but we’re looking at inches of snow and some ice. That just means predicting what could happen and taking some care with details.
I have about two more days to finish preparing for everything.
This means cutting more wood for the fireplace, ricking it up on the carport within reach, and in the shed where it will stay dry and ready. Ensure all the windows are tight and no air leaks. Stock up dog, cat, and chicken food — plus get out their electric watering pans and test them to ensure they work. Put small heaters underneath the sinks so that the water lines stay unfrozen.
Two more days of above-freezing in the days, then it gets down into the teens at night, and below freezing during the day. After that, the bitter cold - and any wind will make it worse.
We’ve had cold like this before, so we’re just checking off our remembered items about how we got through this in those other times.
Little Orphan Andy is still doing well. He comes trotting in when he sees me arrive. Because it means a half-pound of feed mix.
His barn is close by those freeze-proof waterers, and he looks tall enough now to drink from inside them. Staying in a barn would be better if he was surrounded by other cows. But that would make feeding him be problematic, since he’s the bottom of their herd — and why he seems to like being by himself. Over the holidays, once I did find him out on the edge of nine other cows who’d made their way back there. But that was just for one day - and he wound up back in the barn while they went to the other pasture with the rest.
So the idea to have the cows stay grazing where they are, with access to that deep pond next door will be in his interest. I’ll arrange for some deep straw bedding out of the wind. And I’ll also be filling up a couple of used milk jugs with hot water to thaw out his nearby water pail daily - as insurance.
I made up the vinegar buckets yesterday, but it takes them a month to set up. So I went to buy some organic apple-cider vinegar and will be mixing it with a pound of salt, plus I found a bucket that attaches to the gate by where I feed him, where he can get it, and will give him more pro-biotics. I plan on mixing in some culled apples into this to tempt him.
Then it’s just keeping a check on him daily. (I have a back-up plan, but that’s another scene entirely. Hauling a single calf on an icy road towing a trailer isn’t something I want to do.)
One interesting thing that interrupted my writing this week was to get that last extra set of bales out. It meant putting new batteries into the tractor, and spending a couple of hours hauling 35 bales into position. But my Mother has been watching the weather and recommended I spend that last 50-degree afternoon on it. Just in time.
Still have to get steel posts and polywire around it. That’s another today process. Even with the air temps dropping below freezing, that ground will stay thawed for awhile. Better to do it now then fighting freezing weather later.
Tiny Home News
That personal loan from my savings and loan didn’t pan out. So it’s time to spring getting a personal load from someone who trusts me. All because I won’t mortgage that piece of land and any house we build on it in this economy.
I have to dig out or electric blanket, and also ensure our tiny home minimal electric connection will take the extra heating load through this cold snap. One advantage of tiny living is that it uses few resources. She’ll shut off the space heater while cooking, as the hot plate and “ninja” oven put out considerable heat.
Still, we’ve learned to live within our electrical means. And most of that is in wearing and sleeping under layers. Typical winter approach. This cold snap’s worst is estimated to will be about a week.
And I’ve seen some insulation below the floor has come loose - so those will need me taking care of them today or tomorrow.
UPDATE: I got busy and most of the points above were handled yesterday. Looking over the weather yesterday says I have a few more preps do do, but we look to be in good shape for this upcoming cold snap.
Follow me on the Substack app and I should keep all this updated in Notes there..
Writing News
Unless I squeeze it in today (Nope, didn’t happen) the covers for those three paperbacks are keeping them from being published. And paperbacks can only be revised every 90 days on Draft2Digital’s POD, unless I want to pay them - because it costs them to restock new versions. That means doing these right. Ebooks can be updated any time.
But — as the Monday newsletter was put off for hay-hauling, my time was otherwise taken by my fascination with this next project. This is boiling down some 900-pages of 80-year old texts and modernizing the prose to bring them back to life.
It’s gone through several outlines, which generally fail as they get too complex and could wind up boring. Now I think I have a working approach. And might only be a single book. But writing a book in my mind keeps me from the mundane work of getting new covers set up.
Of course, with this cold, I’ll be staying inside more, so it’s a a great time to get a lot of writing done. Winter has been where I get the bulk of my writing done for the year - but between caring for the farm, plus still being a newlywed (coming up on two years this summer) - these have their own demands on my time. She is very supportive, but also appreciates me being nearby and not off by myself doing other things.
To be sure, you’ll be the first to know about my book progress. Right here, every week.
And the wheel keeps turning.
What is really interesting is how much writing craft I’ve already absorbed through these studies. My writing is changing, becoming more confident and precise. And I’m still throwing away less-workable models in favor of timeless principles that perennial-selling authors have employed since before Aristotle.
Also published this week (ICYMI):
Writerpreneur Guideposts
Book Marketing Breakthrough 06 - Learn “Viral” Writing Methods
Malcolm Gladwell had a problem. He'd been given over a million and a half dollars as an advance to write his book Tipping Point. But he didn't even have a first draft – he had piles of material on his desk – printouts, studies, moleskin notebooks with cribbed interview notes in them.
This sixth lesson continues an 8-part mini-course covering the eight elements of getting your book marketed. Two more chapters to go. Here, we follow four books and three authors as they research how word-of-mouth can be harnessed to make perennial-selling books - all on their own.
Fiction Posts
The Hooman Saga - X - Serial Fiction
THE THIRD DAY OF TRAVELING would normally have them back in their home valley. Except that both Tig and Soo-she needed to visit that meteor again.
Sue and her protective wolf-pack hunting party now revisit the escape pod she came down in. Tig wants to show the rest of the hunters, and she left something inside. But meanwhile, the vicious
(If you can’t wait to see how this comes out, Here’s the book link to get your copy.)
Expectancy Tips
I woke up with a bad dream the other morning. There are several approaches you can use to deal with such a scene. Since it was early morning, I simply turned over and next finding myself waking on schedule with a nice solution.
As usual, I tend to take some time sorting through these. Having a smile on my face was rare this early - and so helped me understand that the solution of “expecting your own vision into actuality” had come home again to me. And this time, I could trace more events where my good fortune was precisely the result of my insisting that what I expected become actuality.
It’s the point of seeing opportunities and acting on them. And also the point that through holding your vision firm, you will influence these opportunities to appear in the first place.
Again, you may doubt, but get a copy of Magic of Believing and that author will give you many examples and anectdotes where this happened to many people in just that way.
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I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
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